What is a text structure?

A text structure is the way it is organized.

What are the types of text structures?

Some common types of multimodal text structures you may be familiar with include: PowerPoint presentations, newspaper articles, blog posts, social media posts, advertisements, journal articles, and textbooks.

How do you analyze a text structure?

To analyze a text structure you need to: analyze the modes and mediums, note the context, identify the functions, analyze the relationships, and reflect on the structure.

Why are text structures important for writers and readers?

Text structures are important for writers to convey their intended meaning and for readers to unpack the meaning of a text.

Text Structure: Definition & Types

Text Structure

Each word in this sentence has its own meaning. Together, the words relate to one another to convey the sentence's overall meaning. Then that sentence connects with the ones around it to convey a larger point. If different words were chosen or if the words and sentences were arranged differently, the meaning of this paragraph would change. The way words and phrases are organized and relate to one another on a written page are elements of text structure. Studying the importance of text structure, the different types of text structures, and reviewing how to conduct a text structure analysis helps readers dissect meaning.

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Text Structure Definition

Semantics is the study of meaning. To understand semantics, linguists have to examine how the different elements of words, phrases, sentences, and paragraphs come together to convey specific meanings. The way these various elements of a written text come together to communicate meaning is the text structure.

Text Structure, Buildings, StudySmarter Fig. 1 - Writers plan the structure of their writing like architects plan the structure of their buildings.

Multimodality

To understand text structure, one must understand how it fits into multimodal texts.

Multimodality refers to the multiple modes or elements that contribute to meaning. Some examples of different modes include spoken words and body language, as these are two different ways meaning is conveyed.

Linguists use a multimodal approach to complete discourse analysis. A discourse is a text that is longer than one sentence. To analyze it, one must go beyond just looking at the sentences — things like context must be taken into account to find meaning.

Think about a history textbook, which is a multimodal text. The layout and organization of the text (usually in chronological order) and the arrangement of images in the textbook all contribute to meaning in addition to the written sentences. To complete an analysis of a history textbook using a multimodal approach, one needs to consider how all elements work together to create meaning.

Analyzing multimodal texts requires taking into account modes (the different ways that meaning is created) and mediums (the forms in which the different modes are carried).

Mode

When analyzing a text, readers should note the different modes of communication used to convey meaning. Modes fall into one of the following categories:

Linguistic - written or spoken words
Visual - symbols, images, or design
Aural - auditory elements like volume and rhythm
Gestural - gestures like facial expressions and body language
Spatial - elements of layout, like spacing between textual elements

Medium

Medium is the form that carries the modes. Multimodal texts can be one of three mediums: print, physical or digital. For instance, hardcover books and digital newspapers are examples of different mediums. Each one contains various modes that convey information to readers in different ways.

The Importance of Text Structure

To analyze multimodal texts, understanding and examining text structure is key.

The text structure is important because it helps linguists understand one of the many ways meaning is conveyed in a text. How authors organize the various elements of their written works can drastically impact how readers understand them. It is therefore essential to consider how a text is laid out and how linguistic modes interact with other modes.

Text Structure, Writer, StudySmarter Fig. 4 - Writers structure and organize their texts to provide specific meaning.

Text Structure Types

There are an unlimited amount of text structure types because there are many ways in which an author can combine different modes.

Some text structure types include:

PowerPoint presentations
Newspaper articles
Blog posts
Social media posts
Advertisements
Journal articles
Textbooks

A few common multimodal text structures you may be familiar with are graphic novels and podcast websites.

Graphic Novels

Graphic novels are prime examples of multimodal texts that are in print. They feature boxes with images of the events described in the text below. They thus include linguistic, visual, and spatial modes. The interplay of the storyline, images, and characters' speech alters how the reader understands the meaning of the graphic novel.

Podcast Websites

A podcast website is an example of a digital multimodal text with linguistic, visual, and aural modes. Readers can typically listen to a podcast recording and read a transcript or a summary. Often there are images on the website that add to the meaning of the discourse too.

Text Structure Analysis

To understand how multimodality uses text, readers need to be able to conduct a semantic analysis of text structure. Semantic analysis involves breaking down sentences, phrases, and words to unpack meaning. To conduct a semantic analysis of text structure and how modes relate to one another, readers should follow the following steps:

Evaluate the Modes and Mediums

First, readers must evaluate the modes and mediums in the text they are engaging with. For instance, if a reader is reading a newspaper article, there might be a linguistic mode (the written text), a visual mode (the formatting of the text and images), and a spatial mode (how the text is arranged).

However, there might not be an aural mode if there is nothing for readers to listen to or a gestural mode if there are no images of people. Readers should also note the medium, like whether they read the article in a print newspaper or online. Once readers evaluate what elements are present like this, they can analyze how they act and relate to one another to create meaning.

Note the Context

Semantic analysis involves studying the definition of each word in the text. To understand how words work together to create meaning, you need to understand what each one means and reflect on the context in which it is being used. For instance, consider the differences between the following sentences:

The girl swung the bat at her brother.

The girl stared into the bat's eyes.

The word bat can refer to different things, like a wooden stick or a winged animal. If the first sentence was in an essay about little league baseball, the reader would understand that the girl was swinging a baseball bat at her brother. However, if it was in a story about kids in a cave, the reader could assume that the girl was swinging the winged animal called a bat.

Similarly, using the word eyes in the second sentence helps convey meaning. If the reader knows the meaning of eyes, then they can assume that this sentence refers to the animal version of a bat.

Studying the individual meaning of the above sentences involves analyzing context to understand what bat means. In the first sentence, the use of the word swung to describe what the girl did to the bat suggests that bat is defined as a type of stick. The word eyes in the second sentence indicates that bat is defined as a winged animal.

Identifying the intended meaning of a word in its context is called word sense disambiguation.

Computers do semantic analysis too! Lots of machine learning tools are programmed to be able to break down the formations of sentences and the relationships between words. This can help companies collect information from written text like reviews and emails. However, it is important to note that computers often lack an understanding of the specific context in which words are used. For instance, sometimes people use facial expressions and gestures to indicate that what they say is a joke. Since computers lack this context, they would not know this was a joke.

Identify the Functions

Once you have determined what each word and sentence means, you need to determine its function in regard to the other words and sentences.

What type of meaning does each word represent in the sentence?

An entity - A specific person, place, or thing
A concept - A general category of person, place, or thing
A relationship - The connection between entities and/or concepts
A predicate - A verb structure

For example, consider the following sentence:

Paul works at that company.

Paul and company are entities. Works is the predicate and at that demonstrates the relationship between entities.

To fully understand a sentence, readers need to know how the lexical items relate to one another. Semantic relationships between lexical items fall into the following categories:

Semantic Relationship	Definition	Example
Antonymy	Lexical terms with contrasting meanings	The word hot and the word cold are antonyms.
Hyponymy	A generic term and its instances	The word cat Is a hypernym and cat breeds like Scottish Fold and Ragdoll are hyponyms.
Homonymy	Lexical terms with the same spelling but different definitions	The word peer is a verb for looking through something, but it is also a noun for a person one works with.
Meronomy	Lexical terms that refer to a part of something larger	The word finger is a part of a hand.
Polysemy	A lexical term with multiple related meanings	The word sound has several similar meanings.
Synonymy	Lexical items with different spellings and similar meanings	The word lead is a synonym for the word guide.

Analyze the Relationships

Analyzing the relationships between various modes involves reflection on how they are arranged and how their arrangement impacts meaning.

What type of meaning does one mode communicate to the reader in regard to other modes present?

For instance, consider a news article about the dangers of drunk driving. If the author includes a photograph of a car crash, they help the reader visualize the significance of their writing. The photograph's function is therefore to emphasize the article's main point.

Text Structure, Handshake, StudySmarter Fig. 3 - Analyze semantic relationships in writing.

Readers can ask questions to reflect on the relationships between modes:

How are the elements arranged? For example, are images grouped together out spread out? How does that contribute to their meaning?
How does the author present the information in the text? For instance, is the information in a logical order, or does the writer uses a non-linear presentation? How does the order of the writing shape the meaning?
Does the author use headings? If so, how did they format and space out the headings? What impact do headings have on the experience of engaging with the text?

Reflect on the Structure

Readers should consider why an author structured the writing the way they did. For instance, they should reflect on elements like:

Grammatical patterns in writing
Order of lexical items in a sentence
Appearance and repetition of semantic relationships
Speech patterns in dialogue

When analyzing how the above structural elements impact meaning, readers can ask questions like the following:

Who was the intended audience of this text? Does the structure of the text help address them?
What is the author's purpose in this text? How does the text structure help achieve it?
How does the text structure relate to other modes to convey meaning?

Text Structure - Key takeaways

Text structure is the way information is organized in a text.
In semantics, linguists examine how text structure impacts meaning.
Text structure is important when considering multimodality, the interplay between different modes of conveyed meaning.
The various modes include linguistic, visual, aural, gestural, and spatial. The different mediums include print, physical or digital.
When analyzing text structure, readers should evaluate modes and medium, note the context, identify the functions, and analyze relationships between lexical items.

Text Structure

StudySmarter Editorial Team